Chapter 2
Dr Fraiser glanced at the woman on the gurney. She was thin, on the way to emaciated. Her hair was short and an ashy blonde colour; silver strands glinted under the neon light. Her eyes were the most striking feature, the only thing that expressed some vulnerability in a face otherwise looked hard and closed.
The woman's stomach had been heaving for the last ten minutes, although it was empty and had been for a while. It didn't sound like this team had had time to get any rations before they'd arrived in this, well, this dimension. Dr Fraiser had seen her fair share of people in that state: exhausted, hypoglycaemic, wounded, and emotionally shaken. And yet this Walsh woman still seemed determined to stay in control.
"Are you all right there, Colonel?" asked Fraiser softly as she saw a particularly violent tremor run through the woman's body.
"I'll be fine once I get enough glucose in me," she replied breathlessly.
"Glucose, huh? Most people would have said you were in shock," said Fraiser as she came closer to Walsh's bed.
"Heart rate's too high."
Fraiser raised an eyebrow. "And you know so much about medicine because...?"
"I'm a doctor?" replied Walsh, with a twitch of the lips that was perhaps a smile.
"A medical doctor?"
Walsh nodded. "Neurology and psychiatry. I'm not bleeding and if the zat had put me in neurogenic shock, you'd be seeing bradycardia, right?"
So she was a MD, and a know-it-all. Well, that usually went hand in hand. "You call them zats too?"
"Jackspeak. My CO didn't like foreign words. Especially those that were longer than two syllables."
"Jackspeak." Fraiser frowned a little. "That's funny, that's a term Dr Jackson uses to define Colonel O'Neill's abuse of scientific jargon."
Walsh said nothing and looked away, her face closed and unreadable. Fraiser wondered how an MD had ended up heading SG-1. And her reaction to the mention of O'Neill and Daniel was... well. What was she trying to hide?
"Could you tell me how Kawalsky's doing?" asked Walsh abruptly.
"Well, he has fractured ribs and a mild wrist sprain. He also has a slight concussion. I take it he hardly set foot on the ramp when he went through the gate, and hit the concrete head first."
"Well, at least no vital organs were endangered, then."
Fraiser raised an eyebrow at the slightly distasteful joke. Speaking of which... she noticed Kawalsky flirting with a nurse who was bandaging his wrist.
"I'm not so sure, it looks like he's been confused enough to forget about the dangers of bothering my staff," said Fraiser, raising her voice to be heard across the whole infirmary.
Kawalsky promptly stared hard at the ceiling. Fraiser gave a satisfied nod. She turned back to see Walsh smiling at her; it was a small smile, but it looked more genuine than the sarcastic sneer she'd seen before. Her heart rate had finally gone back down into the 90s and colour was returning to her face.
"Looks like your heart rate is normalising, and I'm happier with your blood pressure. How's the nausea?"
"Better, Janet, thank you."
Fraiser was taken aback. Not many people called her that. Sam did, and some people from the lab, and that was about it. Walsh suddenly seemed to realise what she had said.
"I'm sorry," she said in clipped tones. "I didn't mean to sound overly familiar."
The phone rang and Fraiser hurried to pick up. She had a brief conversation with General Hammond, who wanted an update on the two people's status, and to know when they could come to the briefing room. It felt like he was in a hurry to ask them questions.
By the time she hung up, Walsh seemed to have phased out entirely. She wasn't trembling anymore, nor did she look frightened. She just seemed absent. A glance at Kawalsky told Fraiser that he was doing fine; he was still trying to make small-talk with the nurse.
"That was General Hammond," she said, and Walsh promptly snapped out of her daze. "He would like to talk to you as soon as possible. Do you think that you'll be up to it?"
Walsh nodded. "I suppose the sooner we clear this up, the better."
Carter made her way to the briefing room, escorting Colonel Walsh from the infirmary, as per General Hammond's orders. She didn't feel very happy about pointing a zat gun at someone who looked so sick, but Colonel O'Neill had insisted that she had no idea how dangerous Walsh could be. He was escorting Kawalsky, although his eyes stayed fixed on Walsh most of the time.
To say that the Colonel had been acting strangely since the arrival of the two inter-dimensional refugees was a big fat euphemism. He didn't often get this irritable, or paranoid. He obviously knew something that they didn't about this Walsh woman, but of course he wasn't sharing. What had Walsh done for him to be so distrustful? Whatever it was, Carter didn't like the fact that he was judging her so fast: they didn't know what kind of person Colonel Walsh was, and how much she had in common with Professor Walsh.
General Hammond had let them know a little more about Professor Walsh's resume. Margaret Susan Walsh, born February 7 1955, had studied Medicine at the John Hopkins University and specialised in psychiatry and neurology. She'd been approached by the Pentagon in the 80ies to do some research, and had been working alongside the military ever since.
It seemed that her projects had focused on increasing the performance of recruits in various combat situations and that she'd worked in Area 51 and Cheyenne Mountain. She'd been Cheyenne's on-base psychiatrist in the years leading up to the Stargate project. Daniel didn't have any recollections of her, they apparently hadn't met. Carter wondered if this woman had treated Colonel O'Neill as a psychiatrist; Daniel was right, it would explain a lot about the Colonel's reaction to her.
Walsh had then been recruited by the NID and started working on a covert operation in California, a few months before the SGC had opened again for business. She'd got tenure at Sunnydale University as a professor in psychology, but her main work seemed to be implanting chips into the brain of "hostile" creatures to curb their violent behaviour. Carter's guess was that she was testing on aggressive apes. She'd also still been testing various chemicals to increase performances in the field. Apparently, Professor Walsh had been killed in a freak lab accident. At that point of the meeting, Colonel O'Neill had growled something incomprehensible about patchwork.
Despite Colonel O'Neill's dislike for Walsh, Carter was fascinated by some of her ideas. She hadn't realised that earth scientists were able to achieve that level of technology. And it went without saying that a chip causing severe pain whenever the carrier tried to use violence was something that may well come in handy, particularly if they ever made Goa'uld prisoners.
And now they stood in the elevator. Colonel O'Neill could barely keep still, regularly shooting dark glares at Walsh and shifting around impatiently. Carter hadn't often seen him this antsy, and it was getting really annoying, particularly since nobody had a clue about what was wrong with him. Besides, Walsh didn't look so good: pale, clammy, kind of breathless; it seemed inappropriate for the Colonel to be picking on someone who was visibly weak.
"Are you all right, ma'am?" asked Carter.
"Nothing to worry about, Major," she replied quietly but clearly.
"Oh but we are worried," said Colonel O'Neill. "Not for you, obviously, but about the shit you could pull on this base."
Carter cringed. She'd heard the Colonel curse often enough, and be rude to a number of people with whom he was meant to be forging diplomatic alliances, but he usually kept that tone for people like Maybourne.
"With all due respect, Colonel, that was out of line," said Kawalsky. "You don't even know who we are."
"With all due respect, Charlie, shut the hell up."
"What the fuck's your problem, Jack?"
"Major! Language!" snapped Walsh.
"Aw, come on, Colonel, he's acting like a first class..."
His words tapered off under her glare. She may have looked tired and sick, but there still seemed to be a tremendous amount of authority in her.
The rest of the ride lasted an eternity. Kawalsky kept on shooting angry glares at Colonel O'Neill. Walsh stared at the floor. Carter did the same, wincing when she heard the Colonel grinding his teeth. Tension and icy silence filled the elevator; it was just as bad as the shouting.
This was going to be a hell of a meeting, with Colonel O'Neill acting like a petulant kid; sometimes she didn't know what she saw in him. And if either of the inter-dimensional travellers said that Carter and O'Neill were happily married in their dimension, maybe she was going to flip out too.
General Hammond sat at the briefing room table, taking in the faces of the people settling down. Colonel O'Neill was seething quietly at one end of the table, his eyes fixed murderously on Colonel Walsh. She was staring at her hands, looking ill but grimly determined. Kawalsky was sitting by her, also looking the worse for wear, and occasionally casting angry glances at O'Neill. The rest of SG-1 seemed puzzled and unnerved, most probably because of their CO's behaviour.
Colonel O'Neill was probably right to be suspicious of Walsh. Hammond had been granted access to some of Professor Walsh's classified records from the Pentagon, and found that her studies had gone into a pretty mind-boggling field, with a project called the Initiative. She'd been studying "sub-terrestrials", creatures that sounded like they came from horror movies such as demons and vampires.
Hammond could barely believe that the NID would allow someone to go as far as to create "super soldiers" out of demon parts. But he wasn't surprised that they had let her try experimental drugs on her recruits – including one Riley Finn, interestingly enough – or that the experiments had finally caused her demise. The whole report read like some kind of horror story.
Of course Hammond knew that the woman who sat before him was probably a different person. While Colonel O'Neill's comparison between Professor Walsh and Linea seemed rather apt, they had to find out for themselves how similar her alter ego was.
"Colonel Walsh, Major Kawalsky, I believe that you have a lot of explaining to do. For the time being, we'll be sticking to the basics. You will be fully interrogated as soon as possible."
Walsh looked at him for a moment with a steely glare. According to the reports he'd just read, she had a reputation for being an extremely tough, persistent and demanding person.
"We'll do our best to answer your questions, sir," she replied finally.
"Very well. Why don't you start by explaining what SG-1 means?"
"SG-1 is the name of our team. It's an acronym derived from the name of our 'Stargate' program. The number 1 means that we were the first team created for the exploration of new planets."
"Is this the original composition of SG-1?"
"No, sir. I'm the last surviving member of the original team, which consisted of Colonel O'Neill, Major Carter, Dr Jackson and myself," said Walsh, her voice a little quieter.
The briefing room was silent for a moment. O'Neill pulled a sarcastic sneer, while Dr Jackson and Major Carter seemed fascinated by all this. Walsh seemed to hardly notice, as if she were lost in a daydream. There was something off about her, but Hammond couldn't quite put his finger on it.
"I would like you to tell me about how all this started," said Hammond, drawing Walsh out of her thoughts.
"It all started when Catherine Langford invited Dr Daniel Jackson to analyse the symbols on an artefact that she had found, the Stargate. That was about five years ago, I believe. I was working with the NID at the time."
O'Neill made a disgusted little sound. Hammond glowered at him.
"When Dr Jackson and other scientists finally found out how to make the Stargate work, a first mission was organised by General West. It was led by Colonel O'Neill, accompanied by Dr Jackson and Major Kawalsky, amongst others."
"That story sounds familiar," said Dr Jackson with a small smile.
"Colonel O'Neill's team came back from Abydos with rather interesting prisoners: the Goa'uld Ra and a few Jaffa. The Stargate project was however considered too dangerous and expensive, and was closed down. However, my team interrogated them and had the privilege of studying them closely."
"What kind of team was this?" asked Hammond.
"Mainly doctors and scientists. I'm a medical doctor myself, they considered I had enough experience in psychology and medicine to carry out their assignment."
"Which was?"
"To find out as much as I could about the biology and the psychology of both Goa'uld and Jaffa. There was also another team studied their technology and tried to reverse-engineer it."
"So what happened to the prisoners?" asked Dr Jackson.
"Ra's body gave out within a few weeks because he didn't have a sarcophagus, but some of the Jaffa lived for a year or so, and we spent quite some time studying Goa'uld biology and technology."
Teal'c didn't seem too happy about this, but Hammond wasn't surprised. In fact, if Teal'c hadn't joined SG-1, he probably wouldn't have had any qualms over sending Jaffa to the NID for testing.
"How did you end up being part of SG-1, Colonel Walsh?" asked Hammond.
"General West had retired, and General Hammond got the command of Cheyenne Mountain, although it was hardly being used anymore. And then one day a female airman was abducted by someone coming from the gate, and several men were killed. Colonel O'Neill, Carter, Kawalsky, Ferretti and I travelled to Abydos to investigate."
"Why you?" asked O'Neill.
"Because of my previous assignment, I was the closest there was to a specialist in Goa'uld and Jaffa behaviour and tactics."
"But they sent you out in the field."
"She'd already worked with us... I mean, with Colonel O'Neill and me, when we were in Special Ops," said Kawalsky.
"Really." O'Neill's tone dripped with sarcasm.
"I spent many years evaluating and recruiting operatives for Special Ops missions before my assignment with the NID, and I was occasionally sent out in the field to acquire information."
"Huh," said O'Neill with a scowl.
"Who else worked with you in SG-1?" asked Hammond, who wasn't keen on O'Neill and Walsh getting into a the particulars of her career right now.
"Captain Carter was our expert on wormhole physics and anything technical. And Dr Jackson insisted on being part of the team after Apophis abducted his wife. His archaeological knowledge and language skills were very precious to us."
"What about you, Major?" Hammond asked Kawalsky.
"I headed SG-2," said Kawalsky. "Ferretti, Warren and Casey were under my command. We backed up SG-1 when they went to Chulak."
"Chulak was one of the planets ruled by Apophis," continued Walsh. "Unfortunately we were captured by Jaffa whilst we were trying to rescue Sha're and Skaara. Sha're became the Goa'uld Amaunet's host, and she and Apophis turned up to choose hosts for their 'children'."
"I'll make a wild guess here and say that if you stayed on my team, Teal'c never joined the SGC?" said Colonel O'Neill, barely keeping the belligerence out of his voice.
"Teal'c...?"
"It is I to whom Colonel O'Neill is referring," said Teal'c.
She watched Teal'c for a moment, her face blank. "In my dimension, he was Apophis' First Prime. We encountered him several times in combat situations."
Teal'c raised an eyebrow and cocked his head. Hammond noticed the look of disdain on Kawalsky's face. There was no love lost there, apparently.
"After Apophis and Amaunet had taken Skaara and a young girl for hosts, they ordered the Jaffa to kill us all. We managed to escape... and that's more or less how everything started."
"Unfortunately one of those little bastards got into my head," said Kawalsky. Everyone stared at him in disbelief. "No, really. I still have the scar." He turned to reveal extensive scarring on the back of his neck.
"That looks worse than the average Goa'uld entry scar," commented Carter.
"It's from the procedure," said Kawalsky.
"Okay, so... how did you get it out?" asked Dr Jackson.
"We had been experimenting on Goa'uld larvae, and were lucky enough to figure out a technique to reverse the blending process," said Walsh.
"How?" asked Carter excitedly.
"Now is not the time, Carter," snapped O'Neill.
Hammond had mixed feelings about this piece of news. If Walsh knew how this treatment worked, then she would be an invaluable resource to the SGC. But that meant trusting her, and that may not come readily.
"Are you saying that you can extract a Goa'uld symbiote without killing the host, Colonel?"
"It's an extremely delicate procedure, and it's not one that we've mastered yet, but I have helped perform it successfully on a few subjects. We did have losses too, our success rate is about fifty percent. It is much harder to perform on adult Goa'uld, particularly when they have spent a long time in the host's body. The Tok'ra are much more capable than us in that respect."
"So you know about the Tok'ra?" asked Hammond.
"Unfortunately," muttered Kawalsky.
"We do. Major Carter was host to a Tok'ra, Jolinar, for a few days, then Jacob Carter became host to a symbiote called Selmak. However... the relationship between the Tok'ra and the SGC has grown rather unpleasant of late."
"How so?"
"Since the beginning of our alliance, they brought a number of problems to us but often refused to help when we were in trouble. The first major fallout was when they denied any assistance when Heru'ur attacked us, a year ago." She sighed. "The Asgard finally came to our rescue, but... well, General Hammond was killed by Jaffa who infiltrated the base and tried to get information out of him."
"Who replaced me at the head of the SGC?" asked Hammond. He was slightly rattled to hear about his own death, and it seemed obvious that SG-1 had suffered the same fate.
"General Maybourne," she said with a slight grimace.
"What?" howled O'Neill, rising from his seat. "That scum-sucking weasel Harry Maybourne?!"
Hammond shot him a glare, and O'Neill settled down in his chair, scowling even deeper.
"The one and only," muttered Kawalsky. "You liked him just as much in our dimension."
"Things changed drastically after his arrival. We all considered resigning. However, we also knew that we could... ah, save the world, from time to time, and that if we didn't stay, Maybourne would probably endanger us all much more than if we remained to keep an eye on things."
"Why does that sound like an idea of mine?" said Dr Jackson, pulling a face.
"It was Daniel's idea," replied Walsh with a thin smile. "We were also made to to carry out various experiments that would be considered highly unethical. I'm speaking mostly for Major Carter, Dr Fraiser and myself."
"Such as?" prompted Hammond.
"Well... testing the various effects of naquadah in the bloodstream or trying to reproduce the healing properties of a sarcophagus... altering memory devices for various uses... maintaining symbiotes, cloning them... and his latest and stupidest idea – launching a naquadah bomb onto a planet whose core was made of similar heavy metals."
"That's the reason we fled," said Kawalsky. "The radiation from the explosion was coming through the gate, just like the black hole had. Carter had warned him about it. But... well, she wasn't there to stop him."
"What happened to SG-1?"
Walsh swallowed hard before she answered, staring at her hands rather than making eye contact with anyone at the table. "A Tok'ra named Anise asked Colonel O'Neill, Major Carter and Dr Jackson to try out devices that boosted their strength and speed to extremes. She suggested that they go and destroy Apophis' new mothership. It was a disaster..."
There was an uncomfortable silence as Walsh trailed off. Kawalsky rubbed a hand across his face, and for a moment Hammond saw how exhausted he looked.
"Dr Fraiser and I figured out that the armbands were going to fail at some point," continued Walsh. "Maybourne let me go in with a rescue team. When we got to the ship, it was about to explode. We found Dr Jackson unconscious and got him out. But Colonel O'Neill and Major Carter..."
"Apophis' First Prime caught up with them, and they didn't make it," finished Kawalsky abruptly.
Walsh stayed silent for a moment. Her hands were trembling. "That's when I was given the command of SG-1. SG-2 had also lost two men recently, so Maybourne assigned Kawalsky and Ferretti to my team. Dr Jackson remained with us."
"And what happened to him?"
"They'd made him a za'tarc. He shot the Tok'ra High Councillor and half the people in the room and then... well..." She paused again. They could all guess what had happened after that.
"Anise tested practically everyone on base with a machine she'd invented," continued Kawalsky. "Loads of us showed up as za'tarcs, even though we hadn't been anywhere near a Goa'uld or a Jaffa. We were just... lying our asses off to keep our damn jobs."
"Everyone has their secrets," said Walsh. "Anise didn't seem to have thought of that. Practically all of us had moral issues and inner conflicts concerning Maybourne's methods. Anise tried her 'healing' process on three officers. One turned out to be a za'tarc and committed suicide. The two others just wound up with brain damage."
"Yeah, Ferretti just... became a vegetable," muttered Kawalsky.
"That's when Finn joined our team."
"Yeah. Dr Fraiser resigned shortly after that. We fell out with the Tok'ra. And Maybourne started that project with the naquadah bomb."
"I see," said Hammond at last. "I understand that you people have misgivings about the za'tarc detector, but for the time being it is the best lie detector that we can find. We will question you again to make sure that you are telling us the truth."
"Fair enough, sir," said Kawalsky with a grimace.
"Colonel Walsh?"
"If you believe it necessary, sir."
"We will also need to know everything you can recall about the planet on which you arrived. The device that you used was meant to be destroyed after we had a similar encounter with... inter-dimensional travellers."
Walsh blinked, seeming curious, but didn't press the issue. "We considered destroying it, too after Dr Jackson had a strange experience in another dimension."
"But you didn't."
"No sir," said Walsh. "Daniel still had it in his office, he'd been studying it before his death. We'd learnt how to use it and we knew enough about it to decide to take our chances in another world."
"But... did you know about the risk of temporal entropic cascade failure?" said Carter.
"In theory. Carter had used it as a reason not to use the mirror. That's also why we chose a dimension where the mirror was somewhere off-world, so that we wouldn't be physically close to our inter-dimensional counterparts. We thought it may... buy us some time, I suppose."
"Bottom line was, we didn't want to die right away," explained Kawalsky flatly. "We figured that we could work something out after we arrived."
"But we were surprised by Jaffa guards and forced to dial back here," said Walsh. "If we can make a contribution to the SGC before the failure kicks in, we would be happy to do so."
O'Neill snorted with contempt. "Oh bullshit! You're just here to save your hides. That or to drive all of us nuts."
"The only one on base who's going nuts right now is you, Jack," commented Dr Jackson quietly.
"My point exactly!" cried O'Neill.
"Would you like a moment to cool off, Colonel O'Neill?" asked Hammond in a threatening tone.
"Oh, I'm fine, sir. Peachy. No problem whatsoever," he muttered sulkily.
"Good." He turned to Walsh and Kawalsky. "We'll be keeping you in isolation and under guard until the Tok'ra respond to our request for help."
"Uh... won't we be dead by then?" asked Kawalsky. "Temporal entro... thingy... failure. What Major Carter said."
"I suppose that in some ways you're lucky. The two of you are deceased in this dimension. Major Carter will be more capable than I am to predict how this will affect your health, but I take it you will be able to remain here longer than under different circumstances."
"I don't know exactly what will happen, but there are even chances that the death of the people in this dimension will allow you to stay here permanently," said Major Carter.
O'Neill rolled his eyes and mouthed "for crying out loud", shaking his head.
"We'll see about that once we manage to verify your good intentions and that the information you give us is reliable," added Hammond.
Walsh nodded. "Thank you, sir."
"Dr Jackson, Major Carter and Teal'c, would you please escort these people to Level 22. And Colonel O'Neill, I want a word with you."
"Yes, sir," said Carter, getting up and waiting for Colonel Walsh. She seemed enthused by the new arrival, as she usually was when was faced with people who could share scientific information with her. Teal'c quickly stood by Kawalsky. Dr Jackson looked at Colonel O'Neill for a long moment before standing up and following the rest of the party out of the room.
O'Neill sat there, looking somewhat subdued and very gloomy. Hammond sighed inwardly, steeling himself for a very tiresome conversation with an angry, irrational O'Neill. He needed to find out what was going on, and what O'Neill was keeping from him.